Or when it's all just too much.
Working from home with a computer based job means I am automatically on my computer for much of the day. This is obviously understandable and sadly fairly necessary. However when you combine a sometimes slow (I don't always have active work to do but I have to be available during work hours) computer job with a multi-tasking easily addictive personality, you have a ready recipe for an internet addiction. When you further compound this with post partum hormones, a general non-social personality, general family stress, 3 kids, financial struggles, etc. it becomes all too easy to bury yourself in something like, say Facebook, and only come out when it is critically necessary.
I would say I have a fairly unique preference for in depth social interactions, but online not in person. I don't like to use the phone, I prefer text. Given the choice if I only have to think of me, not my family or the other party's preferences, I'd rather "chat" with a given person online than meet them in person. I don't do the social scene, I never really have, I'm just bad at it. I have always been a social outcast, I could always point to some external "reason" for this, but the truth is, it's just me. I suck at social interaction. Get me together with a group, even one I've been "chatting" with online for months, or even years, and I'm not about to go introduce myself to anyone, I rely on them to make the first move. I have an annoying tendency to interrupt people (this is quite accidental I assure you, I do my best to prevent it but it still happens), and also to just talk on and on about myself, because I don't know what else to talk about. I just don't know how to handle myself in a social setting, and it's not for lack of exposure. I grew up in a large family, there were always people around. I went to public school, was a member of a youth symphony, was in Orchestra, went to Church twice weekly for a total of at least 4 hours a week, went to college, and then trade school. I had all the "typical" social exposure, just the intricacies of "normal" human social interaction never made sense to me. I still to this day can't figure other people out. Again, I used to blame this on circumstances, but really looking at it, any negative circumstances I had I could have over come if I had any clue about how people work.
Strangely, when I can get over myself and talk to people I often find myself in sort of a counselor type role. This dichotomy really does not make sense to me. I don't understand people in group settings, really at all, but one on one I can read people. I can get them to talk about things they'd never normally talk about. I can get someone I barely know talking like we are old friends. I can make an old friend out of an acquaintance very quickly in one on one conversation, but when I get into a group setting I freeze. I don't know how to interject myself in a conversation, how to be part of a multi-person conversation without taking over said conversation. I just don't know how to interact with a group of people, and I really have no clue why.
Maybe this is why I can look at how busy and stressful my life is and rather than making that be an excuse to get out away from it all (with or without) my family in a social setting with a group that I do already know (from internet interactions) I find reasons that I "cannot" go. When my partner suggests that my stress is having a negative effect on me, and by extension on my whole family, and suggests therapy to either treat or prevent what she sees as developing PPD, I can come up with a dozen reasons that it's "not a good idea" or I "don't need it". The truth is both of these things would be good for both me and my family. I need someone, or someones, to talk to. I have been burying myself in my online world for far too long.
The problem is, my online world is not real, when my best friends are in Colorado and California and I need help at home with my boys because if I have to get up 6 times a night to nurse one or the other of my young children and then my 8 year old crawls into bed next to me for a nightmare, and then the nursing thing repeats itself the next night punctuated by my partner waking me up for a "snuggle" in between and all I want is to be able to take a freaking break .... I have no one I can hand the kids off to for 5 minutes and go take some "me" time. I can't swap an hour of babysitting on a day when my best friend has school and work and barely slept for an hour of babysitting on a day when I have a heavy work load and barely slept. I can't just go give my best friend a hug and know it made both of our days better. As much as I like to pretend, a virtual hug is just not the same, and certainly can't compare to 20 minutes of idle chatter over a calming cup of tea.
I realized much of this with a small falling out with one of my close internetFacebook, even to the expense of my own family. Then thinking that, I realized that even after I'm "done with work" when I no longer have to be available on my computer, I pop back in at least 3-12 times a night, if I'm not just on my computer still. In the middle of the forum mess I found myself letting my baby cry because I just "had" to get my response typed out, and realized that it was too much. I couldn't do that to my family anymore.
So I have done what I know many before me have done, and cut myself off from Facebook at least, for a while. I have made the attempt to cut myself off from all online forums that are not also local moms that could swap babysitting with me, get together and have a cup of tea, etc. And I realized, I have access to women who I could do those things with, and I have never really made the attempt to make that happen. This is my own failure, not the failure of these wonderful women, and for that I am sad. How much have I cost myself and my family in not making the attempt to give us a local social life? Whatever the answer is it is too much. And it's time to pop my bubble and get out there, because whether I feel dumb or not, I'm a grown woman and I need to provide for my family first, myself second, and my neurotices last.
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